


Progeny (The Prodigal Son)

by Vrunka



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Heavy Dubcon, Low Chaos (Dishonored), M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 19:19:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11538780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vrunka/pseuds/Vrunka
Summary: Daud is tired.





	Progeny (The Prodigal Son)

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of for low chaos week? It wasn't...exactly supposed to turn into what it did. A million thanks to verycoolperson, that bitch brought me here, all complaints can go to her.

He feels it the second it goes wrong.

The air in his room seems to...shift.

Breaking like a wave. Like the sea before a storm. Like when the Outsider peels himself through to reality.

Daud freezes.

His hand twitches.

And everything stops, except for him. His gaze darts about the room. The Whaler he had been talking to, frozen mid-gesture, the desk, the stairs.

Daud swallows.

He touches where the whalebone-rib rune sits firmly against his chest.

And the Outsider begins laughing.

The strike, when it comes, is brutal and fast and throws Daud off balance although he had expected it. The needle tears through his coat at the shoulder, seems to blossom from it. He barely feels the prick. Razor sharp, serrated.

Daud stumbles.

He can feel the heaviness spreading from the tip of the dart. Mixing with his blood. A normal man would have maybe a second left of true consciousness. Enough to see Corvo land lightly from the balcony above. Wearing his mask, holding his crossbow. Took the time to loot them back, sentimental.

Daud swallows.

He lets himself fall to the side. Slumping against the bookshelf.

Frozen time goes so slowly, but Corvo is even more cautious then that. He loads a second dart and shoots it close range into the assassin Daud had been talking with. He is loading a third when Daud's powers stutter and time resumes as normal.

The Whaler crumples to the floor.

Corvo doesn't even spare him a second glance.

The Outsider is watching the both of them. The favorite son and...and whatever it is the Outsider considers Daud now. A passing bother. A broken toy.

Old resentment rolls through him.

A desire he had thought firmly put aside.

Daud wonders if Corvo knows they are being watched, even now, or if the Outsider has saved this cruelty for Daud alone. The new sting overtaking the old, cannibalism for the Outsider's fancy. His parasitic tendencies.

Corvo's boots step lightly around Daud's downed form. His hands are gentle when he pulls on Daud's jacket. Sitting him up. Lifting him.

Corvo grunts, but he doesn't seem to even sway as he balances Daud's considerable weight across his shoulders.

A kidnapping?

What is this?

Whatever the motive, it is too late. A mistake; Corvo's biggest and last.

Daud tenses, suddenly, a flash and flurry of motion. His hand catches Corvo by the mask, his legs jackknife, kneeing Corvo in the side. Daud struggles, and Corvo, surprised, drops him.

Throws himself backwards.

Daud's hand on the mask, his grip doesn't break. There is a frozen moment. Daud's fingers anchored to the orbital socket of the left eye, Corvo holding onto the bottom.

His mark seems to shimmer, dark and fresh on his lily fair skin.

The tie around the back of the mask snaps.

And both men stumble backwards.

The mask flies from Daud's hand to clatter against the bookcase and falls to the floor. Daud rips the dart from his shoulder and tosses it back as well.

Corvo recovers quickly. Regains his footing. He takes a step back. Another.

His face is tired and worn and gaunt. Even now, mostly recovered from the poisoning his friends had given him. His hair hangs greasy and lank around his head.

Daud's hatred flexes and curls within his gut.

Corvo licks his lips. They are dry, chapped. He rubs his marked hand over his jaw and the clear rasping of skin to stubble crackles through the room.

Corvo is beautiful.

And Daud is disgusted.

"I hit you," Corvo says. Shaking his head. "It was a good shot. You should be out for an hour at least."

"Our dear friend Daud is resistant to poisons, Corvo," the Outsider says. From the stairs. Lounging there like he belongs.

Corvo's gaze snaps to him.

Corvo blushes across his hollow cheeks, his aristocratic nose. Corvo licks his lips again.

And Daud is disgusted. And he is jealous.

He remembers when, not so terribly long ago, he had looked at the Outsider with the same frenetic yearning. An eagerness to please that borders on canine. Corvo the hound, the Outsider's pup.

But he hasn't killed anyone. Not a single fucking person. Daud has heard about it endlessly.

"A gift from his witch mother, wasn't it, Daud? Cheating, you might call it."

"You didn't tell me," Corvo accuses.

The Outsider shrugs, cups his chin in his palm and leans on his knees. "The game is no fun if I tip your hand. How will you handle this, my dearest Corvo?"

My dearest Corvo.

Dearest.

Corvo.

Daud clenches his hands so hard his forearms ache. The Outsider's frank, pit-like gaze washes over him.

"He wants you dead, you know, Corvo. He will kill you the second he has the opportunity."

Not untrue.

Daud hates him. His passive ability to avoid bloodshed. His attraction to the...the thing (Daud will not call him a God not even now, not even in his own head) that used to hold such sway over Daud himself.

They are brothers in this. Two sides of the same coin and all old adages.

And Daud will kill him without a second thought.

The Outsider smiles. It is not a comfort. "Just as you killed Jessamine, right, Daud?"

"Don't say her name," Corvo snaps. Shaking. His arms and shoulders are trembling. If the nature of his relationship to the Empress had not been known to Daud before, it would be now.

There were rumors, of course. There always are when a single woman bears a child. Those closest to her are always under scrutiny.

And who was closer to the Empress then her most trusted Protector?

The Outsider blinks. He stands. There is something disjointed in the motion. A parody of true human grace. Daud looks away. The looking makes him feel sick.

The Outsider looks vaguely shocked at Corvo's tone. His eyebrows raised, those shiny beetle eyes flashing. Daud would never have dared.

And maybe that's what makes Corvo...interesting.

Even as Daud thinks the word the Outsider looks at him.

"Starting to understand?" The Outsider crosses his arms. Lifts his chin. Haughty and proud and deific. "I leave him to you, Corvo. I'm very interested to see what you do here."

And then the Outsider is gone. Not even leaving behind a rift or a ripple of his passing. Simply there and then not. Daud looks at Corvo, the way the younger man is staring at the space where the Outsider had been.

"He's still watching us, you know," Daud says.

Corvo nods. He tucks his hair behind his ear. "He's always watching me."

The atmosphere is awkward now, not even as hostile as it had started. With his ambush ruined, Corvo doesn't seem to know what to do with himself. He shuffles his feet.

Daud hates him.

But he empathizes with him. With his plight. Daud remembers what it was like to be the favored son. Visiting every shrine he could throughout the islands.

The taste of the void against his lips. The Outsider's skin beneath his palms.

"Feels good, doesn't it?"

Corvo doesn't mask his confusion. He tips his head. His filthy hair falls across his face.

"The Outsider's attentions. Affections. You remind me of me."

"I'm nothing like you. I wouldn't have..." Corvo trails off, clenches his marked hand into a fist. "If I ask you why you killed her..."

"I would tell you I did it for money."

Corvo's expression tightens. So easy to read. Daud wonders if he has always been this transparent. If this is what Jessamine fell in love with. If this is what the Outsider desires--as much as a creature like him can desire anything.

"If you want to kill me for it, then come, I'm ready."

"I don't."

Daud's gut turns over. Stagnant and heavy. Corvo doesn't want to kill him; benevolent, sweet, stupid Lord Protector. Daud can taste the sudden, plunging rage in the back of his throat. Shortness of breath. A churning in his stomach.

He wants to make Corvo angry, work him up into a froth until they can have a real battle. And then Daud will lose. And he will die. But he's accepted that. His death isn't the point.

Corvo killing him, that is the point.

Corvo tarnishing that spark that has the Outsider so invested in him.

"That's what the Outsider likes about you. Have you fucked him yet, has he let you? I bet he could even look like your Empress, if you asked. I bet he would do anything you--"

"Stop talking!"

"No. Well, you're gonna have to make me, that is."

Corvo closes his eyes. He looks pained, distraught. How a man like this could have borne the weight of his revenges, Daud does not know. The fates his enemies have met have been almost crueler than a swift knife to the throat.

Does Corvo realize that?

Does it weigh on him?

"Is he talking to you," Daud asks, recognizing the stillness in Corvo's shoulders.

Corvo opens his eyes.

And then he is gone.

A tang in the air from his passing. A slight trail of displaced particles to the left.

Daud drops into a defensive stance. He unsheathes his knife. The heft of it is familiar, comforting. He will die but he will go down as stubbornly as he has lived.

He wonders, briefly, where his other Whalers are. He wonders how Billie will take this news. If she will replace him as she had intended from the start. Assuming the Whalers are not dead.

"He put them down gently," the Outsider's voice says in Daud's ear. "As he tried to with you."

It's like a fly, irritating, buzzing. Daud shakes his head.

Something above him clatters.

Daud blinks up to the balcony with barely a thought. He realizes his own mistake a second too late.

A rookie trick, a fucking street urchin game.

A distraction.

Corvo's weight behind him, a tackle, full-bodied. Daud goes down, his feet catching Corvo's legs. The hand marked by the Outsider closes around Daud's throat.

The mark glows gold and blue.

Sparking.

Gorgeous.

Corvo's arm slides more fully around Daud's neck, Daud's chin catching in the seam of Corvo's elbow. Salt residue in the cotton when Daud opens his mouth to gasp for what may well be his last breath of air; rotten water flavors that tell Daud exactly how it is Corvo breached this fortress.

"Stop struggling," Corvo says, just a little desperately. Grunting when Daud arches against him.

The knife falls from Daud's fingers.

The Outsider's mark sings against Daud's cheek. Calls to his own mark. To the whale bone in his jacket.

Daud closes his eyes to stop the spots that are vibrating at the edge of his vision. In the darkness of his mind the spots are brilliant colors, flashing and spinning. And the Outsider's voice is saying his name.

"I don't play favorites, Daud," the Outsider says (fucking lies), "are you really just going to let him take you like this?

"Have you given up," the Outsider says, "after everything you did to save Emily?"

Delilah in the void.

Holding her just as Corvo is holding him now.

Daud's eyes open.

Suddenly, more than anything, he wants to live.

He drops his weight fully forward, hand shifting, no longer holding him up; and Corvo--stupid, trusting--Corvo's grip loosens just a little bit. Daud has him flipped over his shoulder before either of them can blink. Straddling Corvo's hips, holding his arms down.

Pinned.

They are equally matched.

Corvo's eyes are wide. Surprise written across his face. His legs shift in the prison of Daud's weight.

"Damn you," he says. "Damn you, damn you."

"Now that's not very fair," the Outsider says. He is sitting on Daud's bed. Cross-legged. Hands on his shins. His eyes rake over Daud. His gaze is too difficult to meet.

Corvo arches beneath him, hissing through his teeth. The tendons in his wrists are like steel cables under Daud's palms. And when he rolls his hips...

When he rolls his hips the erection he is sporting becomes clear to both of them.

The Outsider chuckles because he always knows these things, doesn't he? Daud lifts his head to glare as Corvo makes a shocked little noise, an aborted complaint. Some stuttering thing.

He's blushing again.

Oh so goddamn perfect.

"You're--"

Corvo bears his teeth. They are startlingly white and even and straight. His eyes squeeze shut. His butt presses into the floor like he can get away from Daud's weight.

"Get off of me," he says.

"Did you do this to him?" Daud accuses, glaring at the Outsider again.

The boy's face he wears pouts, playing at wounded. Here in the world and not in the Void his presence seems to shimmer. Mirage-like. "Corvo likes the fight," he says. "Don't you, Corvo?"

Corvo whines, he tosses his head. Filthy, stringy, matted hair spread out under him like a fan. Sticking to his sweaty cheeks. The rash of stubble, a few days growth. Too busy taking out Campbell to shave.

Too busy getting poisoned.

Under his coat, Corvo's chest rises and falls with his rapid, uneven breathing.

Daud shifts, drags Corvo's hands together over his head. Grips the thin wrists in one large hand.

"Nnn," Corvo makes a noise through his teeth. Struggling. Useless.

In a fair and deadly fight, Daud already knows he would stand no chance. But Corvo is weakened, fluttering. Starving, if the way Daud can feel his ribs means anything. The slight paunch to his belly that speaks of a quick meal consumed recently.

Potted whale meat perhaps. Or hagfish eggs.

Thomas has a penchant for hagfish.

"What are you doing?" Corvo asks. He sounds scandalized. His voice cracks. Daud's hand pushes the coat aside, fingers slipping beneath the shirt that has been ruined with days of sweat and one too many dips on the river.

"I would ask the same question," the Outsider says. Closer now. Slipping through reality like an eel. Untraceable. He stares down at Corvo's face. Peers up at Daud. "What are you thinking?"

"Not one of the outcomes you saw?" Daud asks. He curls his fingers to drag his nails down Corvo's chest. It has Corvo arching against him again. Groaning low in his throat.

"Not in the least." Rare for the Outsider to admit as much. His dark eyes emulate the Void, all-consuming. Treacherous. He watches Corvo as Daud slides his hand lower. The Outsider watches like someone--something--hungry.

Corvo's eyes open as Daud cups the straining bulge at the front of his pants. The salt-stiff and mud crusted fabric. His throat bobs, Adam's apple trembling. His eyes are locked on the Outsider's. Blushing.

Daud is the one touching him.

But Daud is forgotten already.

Jealousy again, green and curling, entangling deep in Daud's gut. Like Delilah's plants. Rooted deeply, deeply rooted.

Daud's fingers undo the laces. One handed, it isn't exactly the easiest. Left handed. Daud doesn't even think about the implications until it is too late. He bites the glove, tugs it off.

His own mark glows with faint purple hues, outshining the normal faint teal. The Void again, slipping through. The Outsider's proxy, is that what this is? He flexes his fingers. They feel no different. When he pushes the plackets of Corvo's pants aside he feels no tingling, no foreign rush.

Maybe it's just been too long since he looked at it.

Almost nineteen years avoiding it.

Corvo's cock isn't sloppy yet. Curling up, hygienic and thick from the coarse, dark, tangled hair at the base. As unwashed as the rest of him. Daud closes his fingers around it, keeping his wrist lax, little and less friction.

Doesn't seem to matter anyway.

Corvo shudders, stuttering something. Please, maybe. Please what?

"Oh, Corvo," the Outsider breathes. His voice echoing more in Daud's head then the volume should permit. "Look at you. So worked up over your own noble crusade." He leans even closer, his lips brushing over Corvo's sweaty temple. Seeming to pass through.

Incorporeal.

Daud had been right about that much as least.

"I'm not," Corvo groans. Turning his face away from the black hole that is the Outsider.

"You're leaking," the Outsider says.

And Corvo has started to. A clear drop of cum forming right at the slit. Daud pushes his thumb against it, smearing it. Gives another circle against the sensitive opening just to watch Corvo gasp.

Giving the Outsider what he wants.

Pandering.

Daud himself is not sure why. Trying to find his way back to good graces? Isn't that why he didn't really kill Delilah? Or Rothwild? The Outsider's attentions on him again, after twenty fucking years, and he had been desperate not to lose them.

And Daud is disgusted.

But he shifts his weight to bring Corvo's cock to his lips nonetheless. The stretch of his arm, keeping Corvo's wrists pinned is a pain on his shoulder. He is not as young as he used to be. Corvo tenses beneath him, grunting, frozen. His hips jerk and Daud chokes a little. Has to pull back to cough.

Not as young as he used to be.

The Outsider is finally looking at him though. Brushing Corvo's bangs out of the way and staring down his body at Daud.

"Interesting," he says.

Though it isn't.

Pathetic is what it is and Daud knows it. But it doesn't stop him. He lets go of Corvo's wrists to hold his hips instead. Over twenty years since he has done this, but he remembers the way well enough.

He wonders if the Outsider even remembers anymore. If he will remember this over the next century or so.

Corvo will.

Daud will make sure of that.

Corvo and he will both live with this for the rest of their lives.

He focuses his attention on the head, keeping his hands spread wide over Corvo's hips. The bony knobs of them biting into Daud's palms.

He keeps them there even when Corvo's hands find his hair, pulling at the short strands to urge him faster and deeper. Fingers scrabbling against his scalp. A thumb brushes the top of Daud's scar, nail catching on the raised skin. Slipping through the sweat in his hair.

Daud lifts his head just in time to get a gush of precome dashed across his chin. It must be quite the sight. Corvo's knees are trembling.

The Outsider kisses Corvo's cheek, his forehead, his eyelids. Cooing words not meant for Daud. Placations and endearments.

"My beautiful Corvo," he says. "Oh, my dearest Corvo."

Corvo's gaze meets Daud's; his eyes remind Daud of home.

And Daud is--

"I'm sorry," he says. He doesn't apologize. It's been a long, long fucking time since he's apologized to anyone for anything.

The Outsider looks at him. His eyebrows flex.

"I forgive you," Corvo says.

And then he kicks Daud in the face.

Hard. The instep of his boot crunches Daud's nose, splashes it across his cheek, snot and blood and surprise. Another, more leveled kick catches Daud in the chin, jams his mouth shut. His teeth narrowly miss clipping through his tongue.

The Outsider's mouth opens.

Daud feels his conscious pitching toward the infinite darkness of his eyes.

And then there is nothing at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Come check out my tumblr where there is more...writing? I guess?
> 
> https://vrunkawrites.tumblr.com


End file.
